The hawkish noise of the Federal Reserve cannot suppress buying pressure! Wall Street is firm in its "gold faith" and the price of gold is expected to rise for the fifth consecutive time.

After the opening of the Asian market on Monday, the spot gold price was trading around $4,320 per ounce, continuing its upward trend for the fourth consecutive day and extending the strong gains from last week. Asian gold stocks also collectively rose during the Asian market session. Despite the Federal Reserve announcing three consecutive interest rate cuts on Wednesday in Eastern Time, three policy makers voted against it, leading to significant differences among investors in the stock market regarding the extent of further easing of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve in 2026. While the three major U.S. stock indexes experienced significant declines last Friday, the gold price under the spot benchmark continued to rise by more than 2% last week. Overall, gold continued to steadily rise after four consecutive days of gains, highlighting the conflicting hawkish and dovish statements from Federal Reserve officials that have prompted most interest rate futures traders to increase their bets on further monetary easing next year. Senior strategist Philip Marey from Rabobank pointed out that in order to stimulate the economy before the midterm elections in the U.S., the Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates to neutral levels or even lower by November 2026. This strategist stated that due to the lag in the transmission of Federal Reserve monetary policy, the rate cuts need to be completed by October in order to have an impact on the midterm elections in November. Therefore, under political pressure from Trump, the Federal Reserve may lower rates to 2.75%-3.00% by September 2026, equivalent to three 0.25% rate cuts - significantly higher than the one rate cut expected by the FOMC dot plot for 2026. The two opponents of the rate cut decision in December by the Federal Reserve - Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid - released statements on Friday explaining their reasons for voting against the rate cut. Goolsbee stated that a "more cautious" approach before another rate cut should be taken after the federal government shutdown led to delays in key economic reports, while Schmid stated that inflation is "still too high." Precious metals typically perform better in a low-interest rate environment as they do not pay interest. Gold has risen by more than 60% this year, with silver showing much stronger gains than gold - the price of silver has doubled since the beginning of the year - both heading towards their best annual performance since 1979. This rapid increase is mainly driven by central banks around the world significantly increasing their holdings of physical gold, while institutional investors exiting sovereign bonds and monetary assets to purchase gold has also provided significant support. Statistics from the World Gold Council show that except for May, the global gold ETF overall holdings in the stock market have risen every month this year. Senior analysts from top Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan believe that the upward trend of gold, which has repeatedly hit historical highs and surpassed $4000 this year, is not over yet. Short-term corrections are just stumbling blocks on the bull market path, and they call on the market to look ahead, even expecting gold to break through the epic level of $5000 in 2026. Another group of similar sensitivity studies from Goldman Sachs show that if only about 1% of privately held U.S. Treasury bonds flow into gold assets, the spot price of gold could approach $5000 per ounce. Overall, the gold market is relatively small compared to U.S. bonds, so small shifts in funds can have a significant marginal price impact, which is the logic behind JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs' sensitivity calculations for gold prices potentially reaching $5000. A forecast from another Wall Street giant, Bank of America, is more aggressive. Strategists from Bank of America state that based on the "currency devaluation trade" logic and historical bull market patterns, the gold price is expected to break through $6000 in the spring of next year. Bank of America's statistics show that the allocation of gold assets in the global investment institutions and private client portfolios is still low, at only 2.3% and 0.5% respectively, indicating that the market's structural bullish positioning in gold is not overcrowded. At the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) annual conference held in Kyoto, Japan, representatives from the gold and silver industry widely predict that by the meeting on October 5th next year, the price of gold will be close to $5000 per ounce.